Susanna Moore shares a heartfelt recounting of the many endemic and native species driven to, or to the brink of extinction by humans and especially by the culture of civilization:

Each year I await with dread the federal government’s catalog of endangered and threatened species in the Hawaiian Islands, where I was raised and where I live.

On its 2015 list, the Fish and Wildlife Service included the ‘ea, or hawksbill turtle, as well as the green turtle, Ridley sea turtle, leatherback turtle and loggerhead turtle. Four mammals are considered endangered: the Hawaiian hoary bat; the kohola, or humpback whale; the sperm whale; and the endemic Hawaiian monk seal. Among the 34 endangered birds are the Hawaiian goose, or nene; the Maui parrotbill; the Nihoa millerbird; the red-legged stilt; and the i’o, or Hawaiian hawk. There were once 99 species of tree snails in the Islands; of the 25 that survive, nine are endangered. Fifteen anthropods are at risk, including the sphinx moth and the oceanic damselfly.

The pressures on non-human life in the Islands have only increased with the expansion of industrialism and a consumeristic human population. Will you join us at Deep Green Resistance in fighting for those we love?

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Language is important. The words we use matter, and the ways we use them are fundamental to our communication. With this in mind, Will Falk of Deep Green Resistance wrote a primer for members of settler culture to better understand the struggles around Hawaiian sovereignty, and the occupation on Mauna Kea to stop construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope.

The terms I define in this essay — haole, racism, white supremacy and genocide — are experienced in a very real way by oppressed peoples around the world. It is not my place to explain these terms to people experiencing genocide in the most vivid ways, so I write to those privileged enough to be free from these realities. The first step to acting in true solidarity is accepting the truth and to accept the truth we must communicate with the most honest words.

[…]

One thing I’ve noticed in my attempts to work in solidarity with people of color is that many white people hate being reminded of their whiteness. When I was a public defender bemoaning statistical realities like the fact that there are more black men in prison today than were enslaved in 1850 to a roomful of white judges, prosecutors and cops, I was shouted down and told we live today in a colorblind society. When I was at the Unist’ot’en Camp pipeline blockade in so-called British Columbia and our Unist’ot’en hosts explained the need for separate indigenous and settler camps due to the reality that many indigenous peoples felt more safe expressing their opinions away from settlers, there was always a white person who tried to set up in the indigenous camp with the logic that we’re all one human family.

So, the question becomes: Why do white people hate being reminded of their whiteness?

Although uncomfortable, it is crucial that those of us in positions of privilege examine the oppressions from which we benefit. Falk’s essay is an excellent start for understanding the colonial situation in Hawai’i, or the basics of white supremacy anywhere in the world. Please read Protecting Mauna Kea: Vocabulary for Haoles.

Action Alert

On Tuesday August 4th, Hawai`i County Council Member Margaret Wille will introduce Bill 71, for the county to stop spraying herbicides on county property, including roads, parks, etc that the county maintains.

Please send testimony now to counciltestimony@hawaiicounty.gov ― even a quick email as simple as “I support Bill 71” ― to be received by Monday at 2:30 PM. Ask your friends, ohana, & visitors to send testimony too.

It’s probably most valuable to submit testimony, but you can also sign a petition

You can also submit testimony in person at the Hilo Council Chambers (25 Aupuni Street) or via videoconference:

Waimea Council Office

Video Conferencing Site in the old Bank of Hawai’i Building in Kapa’au

Kona Council Chambers – West Hawai‘i Civic Center

Pahoa Neighborhood Facility

the Hawaiian Ocean View Estates Community Center

Background info from Margaret Wille

Bill 71 prohibits toxic herbicides on all County owned or maintained property.

At the Council’s May 2015 hearings for our County 2015 -2016 budget, the line items of greatest concern were that “Roundup” spray line items in the several department budgets, including those of Parks & Recreation and Public Works. At that time I promised to draft a bill to address the community’s concerns.

As drafted this bill would prohibit the use of toxic herbicides, such as those containing glyphosate (Monsanto’s “Roundup”), on County owned and maintained parks, roadways, waterways, and other county spaces.

The World Health Organization and other health organizations have recently brought forth more evidence concerning the negative effects of glyphosate on human health and to the environment. In my opinion it would be irresponsible to continue to ignore the cries of so many to find alternative means to deal with weeds that are less harmful to our people. To instead simply do another study or to only undertake some pilot project would be doing next to nothing. The proposed bill has an effective date of July 1, 2016 to allow time for the County to transition to alternative means of weed control.

Coal mining on Walden’s ridge
mercury spewing
into the atmosphere
smell the coal burning
concentrating, millions of times higher
than in untainted water
once released, irretrievable
mercury compounds never disappear….
.. not so our mountains;

Ancient mountain forests
home to hundreds… thousands
birds and animals, insects and plants
threatened to extinction
ancient guardians
ripped and torn
open-cut-mining stripping the land
every plant and tree decimated
all creatures driven out
or worse
driven to extinction…
who are they, we….
to tamper with the integrity
of ecosystems
unleashing, instead
volumes of contaminants and toxic particles…

I weep at humankind’s audacity
its psychotic need to claim control recreate
and reshape the flesh of this earth;
The Alps
from Nice to Vienna
struggling in the face of major threats
–pollution and habitat loss
in the name of tourism and mankind’s intrusion
such exploitation of age-old mountain
is criminal…

I might never visit the lush beauty
of Hawai’i nor breath in the spiritual vibrations
of Mauna Kea Mountain…
I might never feel the potent sacredness
of those ancient lands
but I weep to think of future times
when my children’s children should do so
and are confronted with
such a phallic symbol
as a thirty meter telescope atop Mauna Kea…
I ask… why the mountain-
why any mountain?
please… protect them
raise your voices
defend Mauna Kea
of humankind’s psychotic need
to claim control recreate
and reshape the flesh of earth;

Will Falk reports with clarity on what is needed in the struggle to protect Mauna Kea from the Thirty Meter Telescope project. It is critical for defenders to connect with the land and the mountain they love through prayer, but also crucial to translate that love into effective action. The environmental movement has been losing on all fronts for 40 years: not because of any lack of love for the world, but because we aren’t taking this war seriously and are not developing and implementing strategic plans.

Falk shares his perspective as a member, on the ground, of a developing resistance campaign. Different people have different ideas for how to proceed, often based in well-meaning and tradition-rooted ideals of kapu aloha, love and respect. Defenders of the land, holding to these ideals, must recognize that the state and its minions will not behave with the same respect. A successful campaign strategy must take this into account.

I think I’ve demonstrated that the TMT project is enabled by a problematic worldview and should not be allowed to proceed. After Governor David Ige’s announcement last week that he would support and enforce the TMT’s construction, the Mauna Kea protectors want the world to know we never expected the State to help us. We must stop the TMT project and we must do it ourselves. The question becomes: “How do we do it?”

The occupation on Mauna Kea is an expression that the protection of Mauna Kea is the people’s responsibility. We cannot trust the government to stop the TMT. We cannot trust the police. We cannot trust the courts. We have to do it ourselves. In other words, nothing has changed since the occupation began over two months ago. In many ways, the occupation on Mauna Kea reflects all of our environmental and social justice movements around the world.

Our Right to Health

GMOFHI is pleased to announce “Our Right to Health”, a speaking tour of two scientists to our islands, Dr. Stephanie Seneff and Dr. Judy Carman. They will discuss the results of health and safety studies concerning Glyphosate and GMO foods, respectively. This is a great opportunity to become more fully informed about the safety issues and to hear in detail some of the problems associated with these products, so commonplace in our lives and communities.

Dr. Stephanie Seneff, for 30 years, has been a researcher and scientist in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology links the research with the alarming rise in today’s diseases. Dr Senneff will be connecting the dots between the rise in the use of glyphosate, the active ingredient in the commonly used herbicide “Roundup,” and the link to the increase in obesity, allergies, autism, alzheimer’s (and more).

Dr. Judy Carman holds a PhD in Medicine, nutritional biochemistry and metabolic regulation; Dr. Carman conducted research on some of the first long-term, independent, animal feeding studies to investigate the safety of GMO crops in regards to human health. She will be talking about the safety of GM crops, including the research she has conducted with some of the first animal studies.

Please join us at one of these upcoming dates, for Pupus and an opportunity to meet our speakers:

Road-side Herbicide Spraying

During a recent legislative annual budget hearing, the County of Hawaii Council heard a full day of community testimony on the subject of de-funding the county’s road-side herbicide program, and replacing it with safer alternatives. Many ideas were presented, and the director of public works, as well as many council members showed support for trying a different approach. If you have any ideas that you would like to share with the county, please contact Public Works Director Warren Lee’s office at (808) 961-8321 and politely present concerns and ideas for solutions (we realize having our children walk through road sides sprayed with Roundup is an emotional issue). There are many different climates on Hawai’i Island to content with, so providing road-side weed control solutions is bound to require varied approaches.

Here is a short list of solutions. Please email GMO Free Hawai’i with other ideas to continue to add to this list.

Vinegar

Steam

Physical removal- such as around specific areas like waterways, as well as part of a long term replacement program with other types of plants besides “weeds”. Large stretches of the Hilo/Volcano hwy, for example, were once maintained in such a way, along with a mowing program in the shorter term. Once weeds have been removed the roadside can be planted with native plants, especially those that attract pollinators.

Animal, via portable pens

Flaming

C-Cide Concentrate (Testing in Kapoho by Hawaii’s Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides)

Will Falk writes the next entry in his “Protecting Mauna Kea” series after journeying to the sacred mountain’s peak. He contrasts the natural beauty and living community of the mountain to the impositions of industrial artifacts ― multiple telescopes in place already, with the buildings and roads necessary to support them.

Falk addresses the facile claim that the Thirty Meter Telescope is a project for the higher good of humanity, so it doesn’t matter if a sacred place, its inhabitants, and a human culture holding it in reverence are all further damaged:

In response to the “love for the stars” argument, keep in mind that the Ku Klux Klan advertises itself as a “love group not a hate group.” Either we have to trust people like the KKK, or we realize that we cannot trust everyone’s rhetoric. Another way to look at this is to understand that often what is called “love” in this dominant culture is really a poisoned version of what love truly is. Those responsible for the TMT project might love the stars, but that love is poisoned by the destruction their project will create. What is love if it causes you to violate boundaries established by aboriginal peoples? What is love if it causes you to clear an 8 acre space, digging two stories on a formerly pristine mountain top? What is love if it causes you to dangerously perch hazardous chemical waste above the largest freshwater aquifer on Hawai’i Island?

For those committed to standing on the side of life, and in solidarity with indigenous struggles against ongoing genocide, the fight against the TMT demands support and a deeper look, beyond the rosy picture painted by worshippers of science.

From his new perspective as part of the Thirty Meter Telescope blockade, more than nine thousand feet above sea level, Will Falk contemplates our modern jet-fueled culture in which everything is a commodity with no place or relationship truly sacred. He contrasts this to the glimpses he’s already seen into the multi-generational, deeply connected relationships and stories formed by Native Hawaiians with Mauna Kea and the rest of the aina. The dominant culture systematically ignores, denies, or actively destroys those stories and the respect they engender for the landbase. The lessons of ancient wisdom are anathema to a system based on exploitation and short-term profit couched in religious, economic, and scientific trappings.

Falk explains:

I am writing this Protecting Mauna Kea series, in part, to understand how it is possible for a culture to think it is acceptable to desecrate another people’s most sacred site by building a massive telescope on the top of a beautiful mountain. I want to understand what the individual humans responsible for this project think and feel. Are they simply mistaken about the nature of physical reality? Do they really think that digging deeply into a mountain to build a telescope will be harmless? What I have learned, so far on the Mountain, from the protectors, from Kahookahi, and from the director of the DLNR provide, perhaps, an answer.

Quite simply, when you understand a place is full of stories and the beings who provide these living stories, it becomes very difficult for you to destroy those stories. When you understand the language of a place and learn how to communicate in that place, it becomes very difficult for you to destroy that place. When you learn to talk story wherever you are, you can learn to understand, and fear becomes more difficult.

I think the TMT project is the result of a culture that has forgotten how to talk story, has forgotten the living stories unfolding everywhere around us. When you look at Mauna Kea and see a simple mountain – just a collection of earth as I’ve heard some insensitive folks describe it-you will treat it one way, but when you look at Mauna Kea and see, as traditional Hawaiians do, a vast collection of stories and living story-givers, you will treat it in a much different way.

Falk explores the importance of the renaissance in Hawaiian culture and language, rescued from more than a century of active attempts to suppress, erase, and destroy indigenous knowledge in Hawai’i. This reclaiming of identity is helping fuel growing Hawaiian resistance to the illegal occupation by the US, and is currently focused on the TMT project.

Falk, like most of us members of settler culture, can’t know the full experience of a lived spirituality integrated with land: land who nourished and sheltered your ancestors; land who reclaimed and reused their flesh and bones and spirits. But he’s spending time listening to the stories of those who have participated in such long-term relationship with the aina. For those of us without direct access to such stories, his reports are well worth reading at Deep Green Resistance News Service ― Protecting Mauna Kea: Talking Story